


1990

by stunningepiphanies



Series: 1990-verse [1]
Category: The Man From U.N.C.L.E. (2015)
Genre: F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-09-03
Updated: 2015-09-20
Packaged: 2018-04-18 19:00:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,434
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4716938
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stunningepiphanies/pseuds/stunningepiphanies
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's 1990, the Iron Curtain is crumbling down around itself, and one spy is left wondering about her place in a post Cold War world.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I saw a little what-if on Tumblr about the squad meeting up in Berlin after the wall fell, and I started to really think about it. The answer, unfortunately, wasn't so ideal. History sucks, man.

It was amazing how much a little piece of concrete could get to her, Gaby thought. It wasn't remarkable, just grey and rough where it wasn't perfectly flat and colorful. She'd chipped it away herself, hidden in a crowd of people eager to have their own piece of history. They'd had been so distracted no one even noticed the gun she used to do it.

The Berlin Wall hadn't defined her life like it had others, the ones climbing over it and chipping it away with whatever tools they could get their hands on. She remembered watching them put it up. It was a little like that Poe story, watching them brick you in while trapped and alive, and all the while knowing you only looked at your slow and eventual death. The wall was everything she wasn't allowed to have in life. A family, at first, then freedom. Love. Goddamn simple security. And yet, she couldn't put it down. She didn't want to, like some kind of morbid security blanket. 

It was her fourth day in a row coming to this little West German café, so no one gave her much mind for sitting a little too long. Things had been strange as of late, so a middle aged woman staring at a rock was probably practically normal. She ordered the second coffee for the day from a sweet waitress- too young, probably didn't even comprehend the full meaning of what was happening. She probably thought it meant they could go see Auntie Greta for real now. Gaby took the coffee from her gratefully but shooed her away almost as fast. Leave the strange rock lady to her peace, she had things to think about.

"Walls can't actually talk, you know." Gaby looked up, unsurprised to find Napoleon Solo looming over her. Well, at least those four minutes of silence were good ones, because she certainly wouldn't get any until the American left her sight. Of course he was here, he was probably wrapped up in all sorts of back room meetings and talks that would decide the fate of the former USSR. If she hadn't been on sabbatical for the last year, she might have actually been at them, too.

She sniffed, placing down the piece of wall on her coffee saucer with a small clink. "Don't you have buisness to be doing, Solo?" Still, she pushed out the chair opposite with one heeled toe. "The CIA will be missing their favorite bullshitter."

He waved the thought away as he sat, like it was a matter of high society politics rather than state security. "Oh, they can stand a few hours without me. I'm sure George appreciates it anyway. He's still trying to make a show of who's boss." Oh, yes, that. Even out of the job she'd heard how Solo and the new American president were getting along. No surprises there. "You really are missing a hell of a circus, Gabs. Grown men and women acting like children, I swear. We're missing your classy touch to the proceedings. I know you'd put then all to rights." He sighed. "Waverly picked the right replacement, that's for sure."

He smiled then, all full of teeth and humor, but even their little teenage waitress would be able to see behind it. He was slipping. He was *tired*, and try as he might, Gaby had never seen Solo let his mask slip so much. He was greying, of course, had been since he hit 40, but it was like the color was leeching from his skin too. Once he'd looked red cheeked and so full of life he might burst. Now, he was one step up from corpse. There were deep, blue circles under his eyes too, more wrinkles than seemed appropriate on a man like him. Stress. Stress was killing him, and he was letting it.

Gaby just frowned a little into her coffee, letting his one sided conversation lapse into silence. They both knew why she wasn't there, of course, so she saw no reason to address it. It was an embarassment, to herself, to her adoptive country, that she had let herself be so *weak* about it all. And still, she couldn't be in the same room with that man. He didn't deserve to look at her, and she she knew of she saw him, she'd forgive it all.

Solo, however, couldn't let it sit. Gaby had always suspected silence actually made him itchy, with the way he fidgeted when things got too still for his liking. The pastry in his hand was already ripped to little chunks, all that energy had to go somewhere else. "I heard congratulations are in order. First grandchild, always a big milestone." Oh, of couse he did. When you have the power of the Central Intelligence Agency at your command, you can waste resources spying on your friends rather than just showing your face like a practical person. He popped a piece of bun into his mouth, then waved down their waitress for more. "You'll love it, I promise. You don't even have to bother with parenting this time around."

"Oh, so you bothered the first time around? Could have fooled me." His eldest son had been too like him, wild and womanizing. It had taken an accident a few years ago that resulted in little Catherine Solo to calm the boy down. And his two daughters? Well. She'd heard some stories. 

The American just shrugged, unperturbed. "I just meant you. You don't have to be everything this time, Gaby." In an uncharacteristic moment of tenderness, he reached across the table to take her hand. "You know he miss-"

"He snored, you know."

For once in his life, Solo seemed taken aback. Good, Gaby thought, let him be. Presumptuous ass. "Franklin. Since the second we got married, and he never wanted to do anything about it. He said I was overreacting, I was being so German about it." It was the first time she'd spoken her ex husband's name in months, maybe the full year since the divorce. "It drove me crazy, but I never tried sleeping in another room. It was nice, you understand? I liked that there was at least someone in the bed with me." She picked the chunk of concrete up again and gripped it tight. She wouldn't cry. She would *not* cry. 

Blessedly, Solo let the silence be this time. They sat there like that, hand in hand, and Gaby couldn't say how long. An hour? Two? Or was it just a few long minutes? She was on some level aware of their waitress, the street sounds around them, her coffee going cold, but it didn't really register.

So much was happening this year, and now it was hitting her all at once. She wished it would just *stop*.

The moment was only broken when a second man silently joined them, and neither had to look up to know who it was. Even if there were a surplus of massive middle aged men in West Berlin, no one else would have dared break up an obvious moment like that. Solo and Gaby said nothing while he pulled the waitress over, ordering coffee in flawless but accented German. The girl looked mildly startled- maybe the gun visible in his coat helped, or maybe it was his sheer size- but she complied anyway. Women with rocks, Russians with guns. It all ran together anyway.

The stress was getting to him too, Gaby noted. He looked thin, verging on unhealthy for his large frame. It might have been the thinnest she'd ever seen him, including those years after his mother's death. Even then, he'd made sure to stay in shape. Now…god. It looked wrong. The lines around his eyes were deeper than ever as well, and he had the circles to match Solo's. He'd always been such a light sleeper, even in good times. When he was stressed, there were times he wouldn't his eyes for days. If he were getting any sleep, she would be shocked.

"You've got a lot of nerve showing your face around here, Peril," Solo finally sighed, but he couldn't muster the offense to match the words. If anything, he sounded relieved. 

Illya just snorted, then paused to light a cigarette. "You saw me yesterday, Cowboy." 

"Yes, but Mrs. Baker here hasn't seen you in months."

Gaby let his hand go then, tucking it into her lap. It was a low blow- to her or Illya, though, she wasnt sure. "It's Teller again," she said frostily. "I changed it months ago."

Illya smiled at that, and she tried to pretend she didn't catch it out of the corner of her eye.

The waitress arrived again, and Illya took his coffee with a quiet 'thank you, dear' and a pat on the hand. God, how could he go on like things weren't literally falling down around them? Gaby had a very peculiar impulse to throw her chunk of wall at his head, and to be fair, she probably would have if she hadn't forsaken a 10am martini.

"Besides," she continued as if they weren't interrupted, "he had the chance to see me last year and nothing. So that isn't my problem."

She was pleased to see the blow hit him, though the only reaction that showed was subtle shaking in his hands. A warning to others, surely, but to her it just spurred her on.

"Iva had her baby last month."

"I know."

"You should have been there."

"I know."

"He looks just like you."

Silence.

\---

Was it fair that she had expected him to come to her, to drop his wife instantly once her husband left? Well. If she were being reasonable, no, absolutely not. His country was crumbling at the seams, she couldn't expect him to handle a crumbling family as well. And yet, it's all she wanted. She'd carried his child, raised her alone, then with a man she could say she was only fond of. It wasn't that she felt owed, but…god, wasn't their relationship worth anything?

Relationship, because calling it an affair would make it something ugly. It was clandestine enough, but she'd always thought it fit with them. One month a year, they had, one month of running away to some remote little cottage or safe house or apartment where no one could find them, where they could pretend being together wouldn't cause an international scandal. One month explained first as 'nessescary vacation time' or a chasing a lead they found ("The source? Oh, I can't let you know until I'm sure."). Once Gaby and Illya had become the superiors, it was easier. No one knew or questioned it. And if anyone had put together a pattern, the time for blackmail had long since passed.

Well. Solo had known, but thankfully he had been instrumental in helping them get off of the grid. Ipf anyone dug up the information they all would go down. Fitting, really.

As dumb as it was, Gaby couldn't remember being more happy in her life than in those few months. Things would get tense in the handful of years that they had weddings to other people- her one to his three- but they never fought for long. Time was too precious. Once, they had pretended to be a starving artist and his muse on the run from their real spouses. The next year they got to be a military family with their newborn, taking a few months off do acclimate to a new country. Her personal favorite cover had been the month and a half they stayed in a little apartment in Nice, playing as a Russian architect, his German mechanic wife, and their little girl. It had been so hard to leave, that year.

That was the closest they ever got to the truth. 

It was a stupid risk. It always was. But Gaby was never going back behind the Iron Curtain- not as a defector and the daughter of a Nazi- and Illya would never defect. He couldn't, with his mother still living and the KGB tied into his very being. Besides, it would have just proved to the world that international cooperation was impractial, even harmful. When they were young it had seemed like the practical solution, their little month long trysts. Then Ivanna had happened, and it only made sense to keep her real story from both of their governments, lest she be used as a bargaining chip or- god forbid- a ransom. And then Waverly passed his torch to Gaby, and Illya finally rose up to where there was no one else above him to bully him into submission. But by then they were both (un)happily married and with the state of international affairs, an intelligence scandal like the one they were sitting on could have started a nightmare chain reaction.

Now, years later, Gaby just wished one of them had bitten the bullet and walked into the unknown.

\---


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which there are baby pictures, head wounds, and far too many feelings.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Welp. I intended this to only be a two parter, but I couldn't fit everything I wanted in here. But here it is, the chapter that's been kicking my ass for weeks.

The tense silence stretched into what felt like eternity, but Gaby refused to break it. It was Illya's turn now to defend himself. If he even would. 

Out of the corner of her eye she saw Solo's mouth open, looking all kinds of indignant and eager to get this unpleasantness behind them. Gaby beat him to the punch, holding up a finger right in his suave face. "Solo, if you open your mouth, I _will_ pistol whip you right here on the street." He blinked, once. Twice. Then promplty, and possibly for the first time in his life, the man actually shut his mouth. The smirk wasn't helping at all, but at least there was no noise coming out of his loud, American face. 

The little distraction was long enough to bring Illya down a little bit, she could see when she turned back to face him. The telltale twitching of his fingers were calmed, helped in small part to the cigarette clenched between them. The tension in his shoulders had melted away too, though the stiff set of his body betrayed a baseline of stress that not even threats of hilarious violence could cure. Maybe that was Solo's plan then- to diffuse the tension. The slick weasel.

"So," she challanged the large wall of man next to her, "what do you have to say for yourself?"

Illya took a long, shaky drag from his cigarette- American, of course, because there were some habits from his U.N.C.L.E. tenure he never quite shook- then stubbed it out violently into his saucer. "I would like to see pictues." The answer was genuinely surprising. He had it well within his means to a least get a few pictures of their grandson. Sure, it would be a waste of resources, but anyone at this table who denied wasting money for trivial purposes was a lying liar. Moreso than the job called for.

For a moment, Solo forgot he was under threat of severe and embarassing bodily harm. "God, yes, pictures. We haven't seen any pictures yet. You're already letting your grandmotherly duties down, Gabs." He seemed entirely too happy with the conversation turning off a possibly explosive road. No one could get mad at baby pictures. He knew, he'd been shoving them under people's noses for _years_.

She sighed, and whatever black magic Solo just put down clearly worked. Her towering inferno of anger was more of a little angry matchstick now, and good lord, she was just too tired to get back up on that level again. She was getting too old for this nonsense.

"Someone hand me my purse." Both men went for it and nearly crashed heads in the process, but Illya won the race and passed along the bag. It wasn't anything expensive, certainly nothing either of the boys would have picked out for her back in the day. Practicality was the name of the game nowadays. As long as the the thing was big enough to carry her gun, she couldn't care less if it had a designer name on it. She could see the look of pain in Illya's eyes at how it clashed violently with her outfit, and barely bit back a little snort. Some things never changed.

The photos sat on the top of her things, in a little paper scrawled over with "THE BIG DAY" and then a few unintelligible lines underneath. Iva's boyfriend Michael had been so kind so run out and get then developed for her, right before she stepped on the plane, but she couldn't say much about the boy's penmanship. The first photo was of a tired smiling woman with light brown hair holding a tiny blonde baby. Iva and the child. The next, Iva and Michael with the child. The several few photos followed in that vein, various family members posing with the exhausted- and annoyed- new mother and baby. The few at the end were her favorites, of course, just of the new little baby. Jacob, they'd decided. Gaby wasn't a big fan, but she supposed it was a fashionable name.

Gaby passed the package on and watched in silence while both men sorted through the pictures and commented. Solo had the most to say, mostly about how Michael's family seemed to need to be in every picture they possibly could, and good lord, who wears white into a delivery room?

"Someone who never delivered a baby," Illya snorted. "I still have nightmares about the Kennedy baby. Blood everywhere."

Gaby answered his snort with an actual laugh. She'd forgotten about that mission- or at least, blocked it out. It had gone so, so terribly wrong that at the end the three somehow ended up trapped in an elevator in Boston delivering a baby somehow related to American royalty. "I think most of that blood was yours, Peril."

"Yes. Well," he sniffed, pausing on a photo of Gaby and the baby, "it was head wound."

"So that's why you fainted then?" Napoleon tittered.

"Of course, blood loss is-"

Gaby couldnt let that defense sit, and cut him off promptly. "You should have seen him when I had Iva. He was positively _green_." He'd gone down like a Victorian waif, and nearly took out her U.N.C.L.E. appointed nurse on the way down. If there hadn't actively been a child trying to tear her apart from the inside, she might be been embarrassed for him then. Mostly, she just remembered being very angry that he'd done this to her and made sure their child was massive. 

Illya sunk into his chair, but did nothing to defend himself from the ribbing or Solo's snickering. Good, she thought, you deserve it.

They all sat in silence after that, Illya content to stew in his embarrassment while pouring over the pictures. Gaby didn't look- she knew then all by heart now. It was more fun to watch her two boys react to them. She'd missed their smiles. 

Ten minutes into their session, Illya paused over one picture. He looked... well, confused wasn't exactly right. Curious? Distressed? 

"This is Christoph," he said, passing the photo to Gaby for…..she wasn't sure. Confirmation, maybe, or commentary. Of course that one would have stood out, she'd forgotten it was even in there. Gaby took it gently from his large hand, though she already knew which photo it was. Iva again, tired but grinning from her (frankly wonderful) painkillers, with the addition of her teenage brother Christoph off to the side and completely unaware of the camera.

He was tall and light haired too, like his sister, but where she was all hard lines and soft eyes like Illya, he was just like Gaby. Soft in the face, but sharp eyes that caught everything for better or worse. There was no mistaking who his mother was. His father, on the other hand... 

Well. That had always been the question, hadn't it? 

"He's going to Oxford soon, you know." Gaby smiled into her coffee, thinking on her youngest child. He was so smart, she had no problem believing he would get in. Even if she hadn't eased her own hand into the proceedings he wouldn't have had problems. "He wants to be an interpreter."

"My Sarah's starting there soon," Napoleon drawled, once again cutting of an imminent conversational disaster in its tracks. "We should have them meet up some time."

"Solo, the day I let my child date yours is the day you put me in the ground."

"That's not a 'no'."

The sound of her heel hitting his shin was more satisfying than it should have been.

\---

"Oh, look at that. I'm going to be late."

Gaby looked up at Solo, who in turn was looking down at his watch. "What's the matter?" 

The American huffed, scooting his chair from the table with a loud metal screech. An elderly man nearby shot him a look that Gaby almost wished could actually kill. Illya was right, he really was a terrible spy.

"I've got a meeting to get to....about fifteen minutes ago. All standard, really, just debriefing the president and getting talked at for hours about how poorly we're doing . You know, just the usual."

Yes, and that's exact why she was retiring. 

Solo reached a hand out to Illya expectantly, and after a moment's hesitation the other man took it for a firm shake. It was a risk showing familiarity like that, but the hour they all had just spent cooing over baby photos probably did away with the pretense anyway. 

"See you tomorrow, Peril?"

"If I am not there, that little Putin shit got to me."

"Ah. Good to know. I'll crack him one in the nose for you."

He turned his attention to Gaby then, opting for a kiss on the cheek instead. She obliged, but gave him a sharp pinch to the side. It was alarming how little extra flesh she found at his ribs, but it wasn't the time to chide him for his self-care habits. "You. Behave."

Napoleon just grinned. "I was going to tell you the same thing."

\---

Solo was a big, fat liar, of course. If he thought either of his former partners believed he had somewhere to be that wasn't a lavish hotel room with his wife and a twenty year old bellhop, he'd gone senile. 

He knew Gaby and Illya needed this, the quiet. The time to truly talk. 

It had been so long since she'd been alone with Illya, even her self righteous anger owas drowned out by nerves. She couldn't look at him, very suddenly. His body, certainly, but something blocked her from his eyes. They'd always been so earnest- and what she might find in there now terrified her, frankly. 

"What do we do now, Illya? "

Illya didn't move, didn't even indicate he'd heard her. The giant was still watching after their American friend winding through the crowds of people on the sidewalk. Once Solo was finally out of sight, grey head and all, he turned back to Gaby. "You have to understand, Gaby. Everything is broken."

She felt the blow right in her heart. "Is that really how you feel?" Funny, something in her finally released and she could look- really look- into those deep blue eyes. They looked haunted. Tired. But there was no sign of the rejection she had expected. 

Her question confused him at first, but then the full meaning dropped and he lurched forward in a panic, scooping up her small hand in both of his. " _No_ , no, I mean- the world. KGB. Russia, Gaby, everything we have is…" His eyes flicked to the hunk of concrete next to Gaby's coffee, and swallowed. "Some days I think I will fall down too."

She knew what he meant. She felt the beginnings of it a while ago, when things in the world started unravelling so rapidly. But then again, she walked away for her sabbatical in the early hours. Her friends had gotten the brunt of the rapid shift while she wallowed in her own problems. She took the easy way out. Illya, though. He hadn't had a choice.

"I am old. We all are. We are obsolete and still we are the ones trying to keep everything together. The young ones think patriotism is a joke, they say we are as outdated as…"

As outdated as your government, Gaby wants to add, but that would be too cruel. No matter what had happened to his family or even himself, Illya had always believed in his country. He was an excellent KGB agent, and fairly good communist. She just wished he hadn't let that define him for so long.

"There might be a coup. Another revolution. I honestly don't know anymore, no one can say. I don't even know if there will be KGB tomorrow." He squeezed her small hand, and the look of helplessness on his face was heartbreaking. "I wanted to be there, Gaby."

They really should have done this somewhere away from prying eyes, she realized too late. There were tears pricking at the corners of her eyes, in earnest this time, and she almost didn't have the energy to stop them. There were probably several eyes on them at that moment, too. She knew U.N.C.L.E. kept a (benign) eye on her most if the time, and surely Illya ranked at least a few tails from all manner of agencies, not to mention some from his own. It was sickening to think this is the way people would find out. The last thing she needed was to cry for their cameras too.

Gaby Teller, director of U.N.C.L.E. and Illya Kuryakin, infamously volatile hammer of KGB intelligence, hand in hand on a busy street in West Berlin. She had to admit this all made for absolutely wonderful gossip. 

A short hard squeeze brought her back to the present, and Gaby hadn't even realized she was wandering. "-by? Gaby, speak to me." Illya's eyes here cemented on to her face, concern rolling off his body in waves. What must he be thinking? 

"Illya, I-" She cut off right as she caught a camera flash from a 3rd floor window across the street. Oh good lord, they were really training the new ones poorly. In their day they couldn't afford to be so obvious. Not that meeting in broad daylight wasn't obvious, too, but...oh, the principal of the thing. 

"Why don't we move this to my hotel?"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Look, there's no reason Putin should even be here. Just indulge me this once.

**Author's Note:**

> A note about approximate ages: Gaby is 52, Illya is 59, and Solo is 61.


End file.
